It’s really no secret – I don’t do instant coffee. Not Starbucks on the go. Not a Keurig pod that spits out something brown and vaguely caffeinated. Not that weak, paper-cup, convenience-over-quality nonsense. Some people live for the speed. For the instant jolt. For the easy fix. Me? I make my coffee the hard way, a French press.
It’s a lot of steps. Measure the beans. Grind them fresh. Heat the water just right not too hot, not too cold. Pour. Bloom. Sit. Steep. Press. Pour again. It’s deliberate. It’s slow. It’s…frustrating sometimes. And I love it.
Because life isn’t instant either.
We live in a world addicted to speed. Fast food. Fast replies. Fast fixes. Fast solutions. But the truth? Some things don’t work that way. Growth. Understanding. Perspective. Even your own heart. They need time. They need patience. They need to steep.
Patience doesn’t mean that you’re sitting around and waiting like a loser. It’s showing up, doing the work, and letting the process happen. Grinding your beans. Pouring the water. Blooming. Waiting. Watching. Paying attention. That’s how good things happen. That’s how clarity hits. That’s how insight, strength, and progress come to life.
And here’s the kicker: the results are bold. Rich. Worth the effort. Worth the wait. The slow stuff always is.
So here’s my challenge for you today: embrace the slow. Stop reaching for the quick fix. Don’t skim through your life like a K-cup. Measure it. Bloom it. Steep it. Sit with it. Let the heat do its work. And while you’re at it, pour yourself a good cup of coffee, lean back, and savor it. Smell it. Taste it. Let it remind you that good things, the things that matter, take time.
Life doesn’t have to be instant. Some of the best things – clarity, growth, perspective – take time to steep. They’re French press strong. Bold. Worth the wait. And yes, they hit harder than anything that comes out of a pod.
That’s the thing nobody warns you about. Burnout doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t send a calendar invite. It doesn’t tap you on the shoulder and say “hey, you’re about to lose it.”
It just quietly rewires you.
And one day you realize, almost always way too late, that the person looking back at you in the mirror is someone you don’t fully recognize anymore.
Maybe it showed up at the dinner table.
You snapped. Hard. Over something small. The kind of thing that wouldn’t have registered six months ago. Your kid spilled a drink. Your spouse asked a simple question with bad timing. And something in you detonated that had no business being that close to the surface.
You apologized. You moved on. But somewhere in the back of your mind a small voice whispered, Yikes that wasn’t okay.
Or maybe it went the other direction entirely.
You came home feeling the weight of everything you carry at work. All of the needs, the crises, the impossible expectations. And you couldn’t fix any of it. So you bought things. Gifts you couldn’t really afford. Experiences designed to compensate for your absence, physically or emotionally. You showed up with dinner and flowers and a smile and nobody knew you were drowning behind it.
Because you didn’t know you were drowning behind it.
Here’s what nobody in a high-demand profession wants to admit.
When you spend your days carrying other people’s weight – their grief, their chaos, their emergencies, their spiritual crises, their trauma – something has to give somewhere. And it almost never gives at work. At work you are professional. Composed. Capable. You are the one with the answers.
So it gives at home.
It gives in the car on the way home when you someone cuts you off and you go nuclear.
It gives at 11pm when you can’t sleep but you also can’t explain what’s wrong.
It gives when you start reaching for things – food, alcohol, screens, control, conflict, isolation…things that scratch an itch you can’t quite name.
You’re not a bad person. You’re a depleted one.
And depleted people do things that are out of character. They control what they can because they can’t control what matters most. They withdraw from the people who are safest because safety feels like a place where the mask can come off. And they’re terrified of what’s underneath it.
Anyone who has ever held space for broken people while quietly falling apart themselves knows this.
The problem isn’t that you’re weak.
The problem is that you were handed a calling, a profession, a sense of purpose so compelling that you quietly agreed to trade your wellbeing for it. Nobody forced you to sign that agreement. Most of the time, nobody even told you it existed.
You just started living it out one skipped day off at a time.
One “I’ll rest after this season” at a time.
One “they need me” at a time.
Until the person who was supposed to be doing the helping quietly became someone who desperately needed the help they had been providing.
This series isn’t about working less. It’s not a manifesto for laziness disguised in spiritual language.
It’s about something far more urgent than that.
It’s about the reality that you cannot sustain what you’re sustaining. That the people who depend on you need a version of you that is actually whole. That rest is not a reward you earn after you’ve given everything. It is the very thing that makes giving everything possible in the first place.
So hear this clearly. And yes I’m saying these words to myself as well.
Your day off is not a reward.It is a requirement.
And if you don’t start treating it like one, something in your life – maybe your health, your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your sense of self – something is going to make the decision for you.
Friend, this is not a threat. This is just what happens.
The question is whether you’re going to wait until the wreckage to believe it.
Next week: You’re not God. Stop acting like it. Don’t miss it.
A little over a year ago, I hired a young woman to join our church family and help lead our kids and students in the way of Jesus. At the time, it was about calling, gifts, and mission. We were excited about what God might do through her leadership with our families.
What I didn’t know was that God was quietly writing another story at the same time.
Over the months, she and my son started spending time around the same ministry spaces. Financial Peace University. Spiritual First Aid. Church events. Conversations after things wrapped up. The kind of ordinary moments where you slowly start to realize someone matters to you more than you expected.
They encouraged each other. They laughed together. They shared life in the natural rhythm of church and ministry.
And eventually… they started to like each other.
In fact, there was a moment when they sat down with me and said something along the lines of, “We don’t think we should like each other… but we can’t seem to help it.”
As a pastor and a dad, that’s a unique conversation. It’s one that seminary can never prepare you to have!
But sometimes the best things in life are the ones God gently grows when nobody is trying to force anything.
What started as friendship slowly turned into something deeper. And last night, it became something official.
My son asked her to marry him.
He took her back to the place where they had their first date. The whole evening involved a bit of strategy on his part. The rest of us were part of the distraction so she wouldn’t suspect what was coming. Watching it all unfold was one of those moments you wish you could slow down and hold onto for a while.
And when the moment finally came… she said yes.
As a dad, there are moments that fill you with a quiet kind of pride. Not pride in accomplishments or achievements, but pride in the kind of people your kids are becoming.
Watching my son step forward with courage and commitment meant a lot to me.
And watching the woman he chose, the same woman who has been faithfully investing in our church’s kids and families, made it even more meaningful.
Sometimes God writes stories that none of us could have planned.
A year ago, I was welcoming a staff member into our church family.
Last night, we celebrated welcoming her into our actual family.
Life has a funny way of doing that.
To both of you: we are proud of you, we love you, and we can’t wait to see the life God builds through your marriage.
Congratulations Matthew and Molly! The best chapters are still ahead.
According to a recent study from Barna Group24% of pastors are seriously considering quitting ministry altogether.
One out of four.
Admittedly that number is significantly down from where it was during the Covid era but 24% is still shockingly high!
If one out of four airline pilots were reconsidering their career mid-flight, we wouldn’t clap because it used to be 60%. If your heart surgeon was 25% likely to walk out of the operating room, you probably wouldn’t be super excited to get on that bed.
We’d call it what it is: A warning light on the dashboard at a minimum. And something any garage mechanic knows, ignoring warning lights doesn’t fix engines.
This Isn’t Just About Burnout
In case you were curious. Most pastors don’t quit because they one day just stopped loving Jesus.
They quit because:
The expectations never stop.
The criticism never sleeps.
The boundaries never existed.
The church became a machine that runs on one exhausted leader.
We have built a church model that quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) says:
“Be everywhere. Fix everything. Preach perfectly but not too long. Lead boldly. Be emotionally available. Never show weakness.”
Friends that’s not shepherding. That’s setting someone up for failure!
Consumer Christianity Isn’t Helping
If we’re being totally honest, we’ve created a monster that we’re having a hard time taming. Churches today are often treated like content platforms.
People compare sermons like podcasts. They critique decisions like Google reviews. They leave quietly instead of reconciling biblically.
And pastors are trying to lead people who are being discipled more by algorithms than Scripture. So many people evaluate their church experience by what the church they visited on vacation is doing. Even though they don’t evaluate the million dollar budget that campus uses to pull off that level of production.
Simply put the weight adds up.
But here’s the part that matters most: We are not powerless in this. There are solutions.
Five Pieces of Hard-Won Advice
1. Never Make a Permanent Decision Because of a Temporary Season
If you’re a pastor in that 24%, hear this clearly: Quitting because it’s hard won’t remove hard.
It will just relocate it.
Every calling has difficulty. Every workplace has dysfunction. Every community has broken people. Don’t make a permanent decision in a season of emotional depletion.
Find a way to rest. Get counsel. Take a sabbatical if needed. Restructure yoru schedule. Heck repent if necessary.
But don’t confuse fatigue with a change in calling.
Hard seasons end. Permanent exits don’t.
2. Love Your Pastor. Not Just the Version You Wish He Was
If you’re in a church, this is for you.
Love your pastor.
Not the polished online preacher you compare him to. Not the friend-version you wish he would be. Not the always-available-on-demand spiritual concierge.
Love the real human being called to shepherd you.
And understand this: A faithful pastor cannot overlook sin just because you’re friends.
If he offers correction or even a gentle rebuke, that’s not betrayal. That’s biblical love. If you’ve been in this situation from a pastor who’s also your friend, then you’ve experienced one of the hardest forms of love and care you can imagine. Don’t throw that one away.
We can’t say we want courageous preaching and then resent it when it hits close to home.
3. Set Safe Boundaries (Before It Gets Ugly)
Pastors are notorious for living in the margins. We laugh about the “one hour work week” myth. But here’s the truth: ministry expands endlessly if you let it.
There is always one more meeting. One more crisis. One more call. One more email.
If pastors are not careful, they trade family for ministry in the name of faithfulness. And it gets ugly.
A truth I live by is simple yet changed everything for me. Every “yes” is a “no” to something else.
Say yes to every evening meeting? You’re saying no to dinner with your kids.
Say yes to every emotional demand? You’re saying no to your own soul care.
Boundaries are not selfish. They’re stewardship.
4. Build Teams, Not Pedestals
The future of the church does not belong to exhausted heroes. It belongs to healthy teams.
Shared leadership is not weakness. Delegation is not laziness. Plurality is not compromise.
If your church rises and falls on one personality, that’s not revival. That’s fragility. And fragile systems eventually crack.
5. Measure Faithfulness, Not Applause
Social media metrics lie. Attendance spikes fluctuate. Online engagement is not the same as spiritual maturity.
Pastors burn out when they measure themselves against applause instead of obedience.
Faithfulness rarely trends. It rarely goes viral. It often goes unnoticed.
But it lasts.
And lasting ministry matters more than loud ministry.
Let’s Be Clear
This isn’t about protecting fragile pastors. It’s about protecting the future of the church. Twenty-four percent is not just a stat!
It represents shepherds who are tired. Families who feel the strain. Congregations who don’t always realize the weight their leaders carry.
The trend may be improving. But it’s still a warning. And warnings are gifts if we pay attention.
The church does not need more burned-out heroes. It needs healthy shepherds.
And that starts with courage, humility, boundaries, and a community willing to love its leaders well.
Twenty-four percent is too many.
Let’s not wait until it climbs again to take it seriously.
Tomorrow, the world will convince you that love is all about chocolate, flowers, and sappy cards celebrating a guy who… got beheaded. Yep. St. Valentine didn’t exactly go down in history for his romantic poetry or his Pinterest-worthy proposals. He went down because he stood up for what he believed, even when it cost him everything.
Off with his head!
Here’s the quick version: Valentine lived in a time when the Roman Empire was all about control. Emperor Claudius II didn’t want soldiers distracted by love, so he banned marriages for young men. Valentine, being the kind of guy who didn’t take kindly to stupid laws, kept marrying couples in secret. He got caught. He got thrown in jail. And yes, he got executed. No chocolates, no roses, no Hallmark moment. Just courage. And one less head in the world.
So, here’s the takeaway for the rest of us: Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about flowers, expensive dinners, or forced romance. It can be about giving of ourselves boldly, courageously, and selflessly. About showing love in ways that matter, even when it’s inconvenient, risky, or doesn’t come with a shiny bow.
If you want to honor St. Valentine tomorrow, skip the clichés. Stand up for someone. Encourage a friend. Sacrifice a little comfort to make life better for someone else. That’s love worth celebrating.
And honestly? My wife deserves the real Valentine’s Day award for putting up with me. She’s the one I get to show love to every day. Not a lot of chocolates, very few dead flowers. Just several references to dead saints and tons of patience required.
Because real love isn’t a holiday. It’s courage in action.
I’ve been slowly working through The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, and it’s one of those books that makes you stop mid-page and think, Yep… that explains a lot.
The authors argue that well-intended efforts to protect people, especially young people, from discomfort, offense, or risk have reshaped American culture in ways we didn’t anticipate. They call this mindset “safetyism.” It’s the belief that emotional and psychological safety should be prioritized above nearly everything else, and that exposure to difficult ideas or experiences is inherently harmful.
Lukianoff and Haidt trace how this mentality shows up on college campuses and in public discourse: speech codes, trigger warnings, growing intolerance for disagreement, and a tendency to see conflict not as something to navigate but as something to eliminate. They connect these trends to changes in parenting styles, social media dynamics, and a decline in unstructured play. They argue that many kids have grown up physically protected but emotionally fragile, unused to taking risks or handling friction.
One of the book’s most helpful contributions is its exploration of what they call the “three great untruths” shaping modern thinking:
What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
Always trust your feelings.
Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
The authors counter that adversity often builds strength, feelings can mislead us, and the world is usually more complicated than simple moral categories. They lean on psychological research about resilience and cognitive behavioral therapy, emphasizing that growth often comes through facing discomfort rather than avoiding it.
You don’t have to agree with every conclusion in the book to find its diagnosis compelling. It’s a cultural X-ray that reveals how quickly protection can turn into paralysis.
My Reaction
What keeps echoing in my mind is that: we cannot protect ourselves from every concern in the world.
And maybe more importantly that trying to do so might be doing us real harm.
There is something deeply human about struggle. About learning to carry weight. About discovering, often the hard way, that you can endure more than you thought possible. When every rough edge is sanded down and every hard conversation is avoided, we don’t become safer. We become smaller.
I see this not just culturally, but also spiritually.
A life aimed at eliminating all discomfort will eventually avoid truth. Growth, and I mean real growth, almost always involves friction. Confession is uncomfortable. Repentance is uncomfortable. Forgiveness is uncomfortable. Loving people who disagree with you is uncomfortable. Yet those are precisely the places where transformation tends to happen.
The Christian story has never been about insulation from pain. It’s about redemption through it.
That doesn’t mean we should be reckless or cruel or dismissive of real trauma. Care matters. Compassion matters. Protection has its place. But there’s a difference between guarding someone and building a padded cell around their life.
If we teach ourselves and our kids that fragility is normal and avoidance is wisdom, we shouldn’t be surprised when courage becomes scarce.
Perhaps one of the most loving things we can do for one another is not to remove every obstacle, but to walk together through the hard things and remind each other: You’re stronger than you think. And you’re not alone.
So last week we talked about the problem. The spinning world of cultural differences that pushes everyone apart. So here we ask ourselves how to not just diagnose the problem but address it positively.
If the world is flying apart…
what if Christians were meant to be the ones pulling things back together?
Not by dominating conversations. Not by silencing disagreement. Not by pretending differences don’t matter.
But by becoming so rooted, so calm, so anchored in Christ that our very presence slows the spin.
Actually, Jesus had language for this. He said, “You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world.”
Salt preserves. Light clarifies.
Neither of them screams.
Both change their environment simply by being present.
We’ll call that gravitational living.
The Middle Isn’t Compromise. It’s Courage
In today’s culture, the middle gets mocked.
If you don’t fully rage, you must not care. If you refuse to demonize, you must be naïve. If you listen too long, you must be secretly switching teams.
But the middle Jesus invites us into isn’t lukewarm.
It’s not spineless.
It’s not unclear.
It’s strong enough to hold tension without exploding.
The middle is where patience lives. The middle is where humility breathes. The middle is where people stop performing and start being human again.
Choosing to live there is costly however.
You’ll disappoint extremists on both sides.
You’ll get misunderstood.
You’ll be accused of being too slow, too soft, too hesitant.
But Jesus was accused of the very same things.
What Makes Someone Gravitational?
Some people don’t repel. They attract.
Not because they’re flashy.
But because when you’re around them, you feel calmer. Heard. Human again.
They don’t panic in disagreement.
They don’t turn every conversation into a courtroom.
They ask better questions than they make speeches.
They don’t rush to categorize you.
They leave room for mystery, repentance, growth.
They’re anchored to something deeper than outrage.
That’s not personality.
That’s formation.
That’s what happens when a life orbits Christ long enough to start reflecting His gravity.
Different Enough to Make the World Curious
Jesus never told His followers to blend in.
He told them to glow.
He told them to season the place.
He told them to stand out so clearly that people would see and then want to know where that kind of life comes from.
Not louder. Clearer.
Not harsher. Holier.
Not detached. Present.
The church was never meant to be another tribe shouting from the edges. It was meant to be a preview of a different kingdom. A place where enemies share communion. Where confession beats performance. Where grace is practiced before it’s preached. Where truth is spoken without shredding dignity. Where people don’t have to agree on everything to remain at the same table.
That kind of community messes with the algorithms.
It doesn’t fit cleanly into headlines.
It can’t be easily caricatured.
Which is exactly why it becomes compelling. It’s why I call it gravitational living.
What If We Lived Like the Difference?
What if we stopped waiting for culture to calm down and decided to become calm ourselves?
What if we practiced hospitality in an age of hostility?
What if our churches became known not for outrage…but for steadiness?
Not for fear…but for courage?
Not for withdrawal…but for presence?
What if people walked into Christian spaces and thought:
I don’t know what these people believe yet, but I can breathe here.
That’s gravitational.
That’s salt and light.
That’s the aroma of another world leaking into this one.
The Quiet Power of a Centered Life
Gravitational people don’t rush.
They don’t need to win every argument.
They’re too busy loving neighbors, raising kids, forgiving enemies, serving quietly, praying stubbornly, and showing up week after week.
They understand that revolutions of the heart rarely trend.
They happen at dinner tables.
In hospital rooms.
In school parking lots.
In small groups.
In ordinary faithfulness.
The kind that doesn’t make headlines but reshapes communities.
Your Invitation
In a culture addicted to extremes be centered.
In a world spinning itself dizzy be anchored.
In an age of shouting be luminous.
Be the people who make others curious again.
Be the people who make complexity survivable.
Be the people who prove that conviction and kindness can coexist.
Be the gravitational pull toward Christ.
Because the gospel doesn’t push people to the edges.
Life moves fast. Between work, family, the news, and endless to-do lists, it’s easy to get swept up in the noise and lose sight of what truly shapes our story.
But here’s something worth remembering. Our lives aren’t defined solely by what happens to us. They’re shaped by how we interpret, respond to, and make meaning from those experiences. The stories we tell ourselves become the lens through which we see the world and our place in it.
Are you aware of the narrative you’ve been living by? Sometimes, we carry old stories. Stories about who we are, what we deserve, or what our future holds. Stories that no longer serve us. These stories often keep us stuck, afraid, or disconnected from our true potential.
What if you could pause right now and examine those stories? Which ones are empowering you, helping you move forward with hope and purpose? And which ones are holding you back, planting seeds of doubt or regret?
The power lies in your ability to rewrite your story. It doesn’t mean ignoring reality or pretending everything is perfect. It means choosing to focus on the truths that fuel growth, healing, and resilience.
Maybe it’s releasing the grip on past mistakes and embracing grace. Maybe it’s daring to believe in your own capacity to change and grow. Maybe it’s deciding that your worth isn’t tied to anyone else’s approval or your past failures.
This week, take time to reflect on the story you want to live by. What parts can you release? What new chapters can you begin writing today? How might your life shift if you let Jesus become the author of your own story instead of being a character stuck in someone else’s script?
Remember: Your story is still being written and your past is not the author.
Take a deep breath, reflect deeply, and move forward with intention and courage.
There’s something about a big winter storm that exposes how little control we actually have.
You make plans. You clear the driveway. You check the forecast.
And then twelve inches of snow shows up anyway.
Schedules get wrecked. Kids are suddenly home from school. The grocery run feels like an expedition. Temperatures drop below zero and stay there for days. Add in the start of tax season, and a lot of people are carrying more than usual right now.
It’s the kind of week that drains momentum.
I was reminded of that as I thought about a moment from the beginning of Jesus’ story when He starts gathering the people who would follow Him.
They weren’t searching for a new religion. They weren’t in a seminar. They weren’t waiting for a life upgrade.
They were just…working.
Fishing. Walking. Talking. Living normal lives.
Jesus didn’t launch into a long speech. He didn’t hand them a checklist. He didn’t tell them to fix their lives first.
He simply said something incredibly simple: Come and see.
To a few others, the invitation sounded like this: Follow me.
That’s it.
Not, “Get everything together and then come.” Not, “Wait until life slows down.” Not, “Clear your schedule and solve your problems first.”
Just: come.
I keep thinking about how timely that feels.
Most of us don’t meet God when conditions are perfect. We meet Him when the roads are bad, the calendar is crowded, the money feels tight, and we’re tired of shoveling the same driveway for the fifth time in a single day.
What I love about those early encounters with Jesus is how ordinary they are. He meets people exactly where they are and invites them to take one step closer. No pressure, no hype, no pretending. Just show up.
Which makes me wonder how often we talk ourselves out of spiritual movement because the week feels too chaotic.
“I’ll slow down when things settle.” “I’ll think about God when this season passes.” “I’ll get back to that once life feels manageable.”
But what if the invitation isn’t waiting for better weather?
What if it’s standing right here in the middle of frozen fingers, delayed plans, and cluttered kitchens?
Come and see.
Maybe that looks less dramatic than we think.
Maybe it’s a quiet moment before you grab your phone in the morning.
Maybe it’s an honest thought on the drive to work: God, if You’re real, I could use some help today.
Maybe it’s opening up one of the stories about Jesus and reading a few lines, not because you have to, but because you’re curious.
Maybe it’s choosing patience with your kids when everyone’s stir-crazy.
Maybe it’s reaching out to someone else who’s stuck at home and checking in.
Small steps still count.
What struck me most in that story is that the people who accepted the invitation didn’t know where it would lead. They didn’t have a roadmap. They didn’t understand the full picture yet.
They just took a step.
And sometimes that’s all forward movement really is.
One simple step.
In a week like this when it’s cold, disrupted, exhausting remember you don’t need to reinvent your life. You don’t need to solve everything. You don’t need to feel especially spiritual.
You just need to respond to the invitation that still stands:
People like to joke that pastors only work one day a week.
If that were true, my lawn would be immaculate, my lifts would always be PR-worthy, and my inbox would be empty. And yet none of those things are true.
But the joke does point to something real: for a lot of people, faith gets treated like a one-day-a-week thing.
Hear me out on this one. Sunday matters. Worship matters. The Word preached and the Sacraments given are real, true, and necessary. But Sunday was never meant to be the sum total of faithful living.
Sunday gives us truth. Between the Sundays is where that truth gets lived.
And that’s what we’re going to spend our Thursdays digging into for the next several weeks.
It’s not a sermon. Not an announcement. Just an honest pause between the Sundays to look at what following Jesus actually looks like when the week is busy, the motivation is low, and life is al too real.
So here’s week one of Between Sundays: What no one tells you about following Jesus:
You won’t feel inspired most days.
There are days when prayer feels flat. Days when Scripture feels more like discipline than delight. Days when obedience feels ordinary, repetitive, and even unnoticed.
And if we’re not careful, we start to think something is wrong with us. It’s easy to feel like real faith is supposed to be full of power all the time.
But faith doesn’t run on motivation. It runs on trust.
And trust is built through habits. Small. Steady. Consistent. Normal rhythms of life surrendered to someone bigger and more powerful than ourselves.
The people who grow deepest aren’t the ones constantly riding spiritual highs. They’re the ones who keep showing up when nothing feels special. They pray when it’s quiet. They obey when it costs something. They live differently when no one is watching.
Knowledge matters. Belief matters. But belief that never moves toward action eventually stalls.
If you’re still showing up, still praying, still listening, still trying to live what you believe even when it feels dull or difficult, you need to hear this. You’re not failing.
You’re forming.
Most of the real work of faith happens slowly, quietly, and faithfully… between the Sundays. Keep showing up friend!
